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Saturday, January 28, 2012

I have been talking about sponsoring a child for the last 6 months with the kids. We have discussed the why's and how's, and what countries are in most need.
Next, Marlin and I looked at a few agencies and did research on them, the BBB, and Charity Navigator.
We settled on Children's International.
Then came the task of picking the country. We wanted some place we could realistically visit one day. It send shivers down my spine at the thought of meeting a sponsored child, the family, to see the region, and spend a day with people who have become so special.
Doesn't that sound amazing?
We were between Dominican Republic and Mexico.
Since Marlin was really into it, I let her choose the child.
She wanted a girl, around her age.
She did not seem to connect with anyone in the Dominican Republic.
So we checked out Mexico.
She knew right away when she spotted Andrea.

She is 9, and lives in an area called Jalisco. I think she lives on the poverty stricken outskirts of Guadalajara. Atleast that is what I gathered from wiki.
She lives with her parents and has a brother, and sister.
They survive on 167.00 per month.
She likes singing, dancing, and playing with dolls.
They live in a 4 room house with 2 beds.
We received her picture the other day.

We wrote our first letter introducing ourselves to her.
Mostly, she is Marlin's sponsored child.
The boys are not really interested yet.

They think this is nice, but they would like a boy to sponsor. I showed them photos of the boys in Mexico, but none clicked.
We'll look again in a while.

Friday, January 27, 2012

I like to put a space between the words, or else I see it as coop.
As in we flew the coop.
Chicken coop.
Chickens are dirty.
In which I certainly would like to leave the coop too..
But I digress
So anyway, what I am referring to is a homeschool co op.
Kids take classes taught mostly by parent or kid volunteers, or hired teachers.
I believe there are 35 families involved.
Marlin is taking an acting class,

There will be a play to see at the end!
I am excited about that, as is she.
She is also taking a Little House on the Prairie class.

My understanding is that they play games and do stuff featured in the little house books.
The boys were a little leery, so we just started with one class to see if they liked it.
They are in a Modes of Transportation class.

Basically they are going to build things.

Things that will move like a glider plane, a pinewood derby car, and build bridges and have a challenge of some sort at the end of the class.

So this is our foray into the world of co ops.
So far so good.
And there are lots of boys there!

Which is good because our core tribe is so girl heavy.
Kaya was even able to explain his injury and have a boy say, cool!,

instead of the girl default response of, Ewww!
He smiled.
I have been trying to keep very busy this winter. Getting through winter with out losing steam and becoming some what depressed is hard for me. But when your busy, and the days are flying by it helps so much.
I can't believe it's nearly February already!
I hope they like it enough to continue into spring.
I hope they don't want to fly the coop....

Thursday, January 26, 2012

it appears he has a tore a ligament off the bone and left a chip.That is the little white line in the upper right, near the bone. See it?
Sounds bad but is common. It should self repair. There is also a pretty good chance that he has a supracondylar fracture, which may or may not need surgical repair. We'll re evaluate next week.
It is that faint line that is above where the two bones would bend. It's hard to see...
Depending on how things look on the next x-ray, we may move on to a MRI.